The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today took steps to improve its surveillance of wholesale power markets by proposing a uniform method for organized markets to collect information and to share that information with FERC.

Today’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) would require operators of the organized markets to collect information about “connected entities” that have certain defined ownership, employment, debt or contractual relationships with the regional market participants. The organized markets would revise their tariffs to collect uniform information that would identify the market participants using a common alpha-numeric identifier, list their connected entities and briefly describe the nature of the relationship with each connected entity.

This information will assist screening and investigative efforts to detect market manipulation, which is an enforcement priority of the Commission. The information would provide the Office of Enforcement with a more complete view of the relationships between market participants and the incentives underlying their trading activities. Entities that operate in multiple regions would have consistent filing requirements across those markets, allowing Enforcement staff to better track them across markets. It also would help organized market monitors in their individual and joint investigations of potential cross-market manipulation.

The information also may ease compliance burdens on market participants that are active in more than one organized market, and that currently must submit affiliate information that may be unique to each organized market in which they participate.

The grid operators would deliver this connected entity information to FERC on a continuing basis, just as they currently do with market data under Order No. 760.

Comments on today’s NOPR are due 60 days from publication in the Federal Register.